follow me down
by shiksa goddess
Summary: Austin laughs sheepishly. "I wouldn't get too attached. I am Death after all. I don't stick around very long." He gives her a slight smile. She returns it with a hopeful grin of her own. "But we have right now, right?" / In which Austin is literally Death and Ally is sort of the light of his "life". Or death. Or whatever it's called. AU. Oneshot.


**title: follow me down**

**playlist/inspiration: the TV show Dead Like Me, Follow Me Down- 3Oh!3 ft. Neon Hitch, Endlessly- The Cab, Dead Hearts- Stars**

**disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize. However I don't even know if anything's recognizable here.**

**warnings: language, situations and mentions of death, utter weirdness, ooc, au, and I ask you to use your suspension of disbelief quite a few times because there are quite a few logistics I seemed to have skipped.**

Here's the thing about humans: he hates them.

Truly, miserably, _despises _them. They are the bane of his existence, although they are also the only purpose of his existence.

Well, more specifically, _removing _them was the purpose of his existence.

He knows that at some point, a long, long time ago, he was one of these moronic, stupid humans, but he couldn't remember that, and he had no desire to, either.

Honestly, all he wants is this stupid job to be over. Is being Death ever over? Certainly there had to be some sort of time limit, some sort of loophole that would get him out of this immortal, endless hell.

(Ha, hell. It was funny when you knew it didn't exist.)

Foolish humans, he thinks. The majority of them all practiced one religion or another, thinking when their time came, Allah or God or some sort of higher power would come and save them, despite all of the sins they'd committed. Minor or not, they were all sinners, however, they seemed to assume that because they hadn't caused the death of another human being, they were somehow better than others. That they'd have a way out.

Well, he had news for them. Every one of them, each and every one, would get a hand-delivered death from him or one of his minions, and once they were gone, they were all going to the same damn place, murderers and popes alike.

It sounded terrible at first, but after hundreds of years of getting used to, it started to seem okay. Nearly moral, even. These humans always pushed the equality of each and every man, so, wasn't this pretty equal?

He thought so, anyway. But maybe he was biased.

/

October 16th, 2017 starts off as any other normal day. As normal as being Death could get.

Because his initial was A, and he was the leader of all the Grim Reapers, he was always assigned the Aa-Al deaths of the day. This was routine-collect the assignments, go out and reap their souls, and come back to his literal other world of death and despair, and wait for it to start all over again.

Leave it to a human to throw a wrench in things.

/

To understand Austin's life, you had to know two things. One, when he was out reaping people, he looked like any other twenty-two year old guy, dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans, with messy blonde hair and hazel eyes. He'd never had any confirmation, but he assumed that was the way he looked before he'd become Death. The rumours about Death always showing up in a black cape-and-hood getup with that pickaxe or whatever the hell that was were fucking idiotic and were just yet another reason why he hated the human race.

Death showed up at your doorstep alright. But when he did, he was fucking hot.

The second thing was that his work was akin to something like a hit-and-run. He met the poor, unfortunate soul he was about to reap the soul of, took the soul to ensure they made it to the Afterlife, then left. It was all conveniently timed by the Board, who were the only people with more authority than Austin himself, to make sure that these people would be at the right place at the right time and then they'd die.

However, on that said October 16th, there was a gap between his assignments. His next one was at six fifty-four p.m.

At ten o' three in the morning, he reaped the soul of an eighty-year-old woman, Alison at a rest home; who he knew would die peacefully in her sleep.

It wasn't as if he really _cared _about the people he reaped, but he did feel a slight twinge of guilt whenever he knew the person was going to get murdered or hit by a car or something, because he knew if he dragged that person out of their place of death at their time of death, he could save their lives.

But that wasn't the way the system worked.

/

At eleven o' nine, he is walking out of Starbucks with an espresso macchiato in hand.

While it provided no nutritional value to his immortal body, it tasted good and therefore, he was drinking it.

The Miami heat beats down on his blonde hair and he questions what he could do to occupy himself for the seven hours he has to kill before his next assignment.

As he crosses Main Street, he swigs his coffee, and due to his partially-blocked vision, runs smack into some tiny, brown-haired human.

He's never seen this girl before, but something about her sparks a faint feeling in him. He doesn't recognize this feeling, so he brushes it off.

"Oh my God!" He yells ironically (God, like Hell, were wonderfully amusing expressions to use when you knew they didn't exist) as his espresso lands on his black shirt, sending a burning sensation on his chest and a few splashes on his forearm.

The girl drags him swiftly to the sidewalk on the other side of the street and quickly yanks some napkins out of her oversized tote bag.

She starts hurriedly sopping the hot coffee off his shirt with the napkins and, for a second, he watches in amusement.

"You carry napkins around in your bag with you?" He smirks with disbelief.

The girl gives him a flat stare. "Yes, I do. And they come in handy, do they not?" She continues pressing at his chest and he for some reason finds himself hoping she notices his incredibly ripped physique under his shirt.

Once she dries most of the coffee off, she eyes the raw pink burns on his forearms, which don't hurt, and will visibly disappear sometime in the next few minutes.

One of the perks of being immortal.

"Oh my God, you're hurt." The girl exclaims. "C'mon, I'm in med school, I can treat that. I live right down the street from here. Let's go." She takes him by the hand and tows him down the block towards a brick apartment building.

As she runs, he notices her curly hair bouncing and gleaming in the sunset, then mentally smacks himself for even bothering to notice something like that. Especially about a stupid, clumsy (slightly attractive human) who had dared spill coffee on Death.

By the time they get up the stairs and into her apartment, as expected, the burns have vanished.

"How... what... why don't you have any burn marks?" The girl asks, clearly in awe.

"You _just _got those."

He chuckles. "Well, Butterfingers, before I tell you all of my secrets, I'd like to know your name. It's the least you can give me in return for spilling scorching espresso on me, as well as making me waste the four dollar and twenty-three cents I spent on said espresso."

She scoffs. "Someone's a bit cocky, eh? The way I remember it, the blame is also partially on you, considering the fact that you weren't looking where you were going."

He'll admit, he didn't think she was a sassy one. But this sassy attitude she seemed to uphold worked quite well for her. If he actually liked humans, or liked anyone for that matter, he might be attracted to her.

"Obviously, neither were you." He retorts.

The girl raises an eyebrow. "Touché." She sticks out her hand. "It's Ally. Dawson. Ally Dawson."She states, fumbling awkwardly over her words.

He stares at her hand as if it's a foreign object. "Shaking hands? What is this, the 1920's?"

He remembers that era quite well, actually. Took some important souls in that time.

The girl-Ally- rolls her eyes. "I was _trying _to be polite. Clearly though, that's something you know nothing about."

He feigns a pained expression. "I'm hurt, Ally Dawson. Really, it pains me that we just met and you already think so little of me."

"I don't even know you. You have enough time to compensate."

He checks his watch. Specifically, he has six hours and ten minutes to compensate. Then he has to go save the soul of a car accident victim. Those were the sort of deaths he could go without knowing of.

"Well, Ally Dawson, I'm Austin. I don't know my real last name, so I say it's Moon. And I healed so quickly because I am immortal. I am Death." He announces unabashedly, because he's never going to see this girl again, so frankly, he didn't care _what_ she knew.

She widens her eyes for a second before grinning wryly. "I have no clue what kind of joke this is, but seriously, _Austin, _how the hell did you heal so quickly?"

"I just told you. I'm Death. The Grim Reaper. The Devil, if you will. Except I'm not that evil. And Hell doesn't exist."

She smirks. "Okay. Whatever. Keep your secrets."

He plops himself down on her beige couch, next to a table with a potted bamboo plant.

"No, seriously. I'm Death. I have powers. Watch."

Using his hand, he willed the plant to die. It was a useless power, having the ability to kill things, considering his job was to enforce the deaths of humans, not kill them personally, but it was good for proving his identity.

Not that he'd ever bothered to do that before.

Suddenly, the leaves turned brown and dry and began to snap off, and the stalks faded from their lively green to a light, blonde-wood brown.

Ally's jaw drops. "You killed my bamboo!" She cries, running over to the potted plant and hugging it close to her chest.

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I show you that I am Death, and I could honestly kill you at any moment if I so choose, and you worry about your bamboo plant. I seriously question your priorities."

"Yes!" Ally exclaims. "Kill me if you want, I honestly couldn't care less about you and your weird black magic, but this was my lucky bamboo plant!" She says, stroking the plant's dead leaves lovingly.

He laughs. "You are something else, Ally Dawson." He tells her. Because it's true.

But it's a good something else. Something that makes him feel different than he has in centuries.

"And I think I might like you."

Also true.

She smiles at him. He smiles back.

/

Was it possible to fall in love with someone over in a matter of just a few short hours? Because, though he didn't have any prior data to base these feelings on, he thinks he might be in love with Ally Dawson.

This sort of disgusts him. She's human, after all.

But she's the best human he's ever met. Beautiful, and open-minded (she spent a whole day with Death, after all) and sweet, and kind, and funny, and smart (as it turns out, she'd dually enrolled in high school, and graduated with her Associate's at eighteen, and at twenty-two, was already a second-year medical student.) She once had a dream to be a songwriter, but her father had shot it down, so she decided to become a doctor.

It makes him think twice about the living. For the first time, he sort of wishes he was one.

She's also very curious, he learns over a shared plate of fries (well, it's mostly just hers but he snags a few unnecessary bites here and there) at 2:17 pm.

She's hungry, but she's forgotten to restock on groceries, so they'd headed to the hole-in-the-wall diner on the corner up the street next to Starbucks.

"So how does one just _become _Death?" She asks, noshing down on a fry.

He chuckles. "I don't know. I honestly don't have much recollection of my life before Death, but I know I wasn't happy. I, uh, I committed suicide. Maybe I was the first person to do that, and this is some sort of... punishment? Or like, a way to live out the life I was supposed to live? I seriously don't have a clue. I only know that my name was Austin, I was a musician, and I was in love with one girl, but was forbidden to be with her, cause I was trapped in an arranged marriage from my parents. I guess they were rich or something? Like I said, I don't remember. But clearly it wasn't fun for me." He said, a bit melancholic.  
He'd never told anyone anything like that before. He'd never had anyone to tell.

Ally swallows a fry, nodding slowly. Under the table, she reaches over and gives his hand a quick squeeze before retracting her arm.

"And what do you do... as Death?"

He shakes his head. "It's complicated. And lonely. Really lonely. I take people's souls before they die, so that while their bodies stay up here, their souls go down there." He points to the ground.

"What's 'down there'? She whispers. "Am I allowed to know?"

He smiles. "No, probably not. But I'm not much of a rule-abider, and I'm kind of all-powerful, so I don't care. It's really not much. It's kind of like living here, really. Houses, activities... I guess it's really more like an indefinite nursing home. Just without the nursing. It's hard to explain, but basically, it's nothing special. But it's pretty damn big." He laughs at her startled and confused expression.

"What? Not as glamorous as you'd hoped?" He teases.

She shakes her head. "No, no. I never believed in Heaven and Hell anyways. I just try to be a good person in general. But I'm just taken aback by _you. _You're... you're Death. You're totally powerful, and you could be totally evil and scary and controlling but you're _you."_

He scoffs. "Sorry to disappoint you."

She laughs. "No, no. It's a good thing! I think you're wonderful, Austin."

She reaches over to take his hand again, but this time, she keeps it there.

He hates that in a world where he has so much power, she has so much control over him. But no one's complimented him, or cared for him, or hell, barely anyone's ever talked to him.  
And in all of his years of being, Death or Austin alike, no one's ever made him feel this way before.

Austin laughs sheepishly. "I wouldn't get too attached. I _am _Death after all. I don't stick around very long." He gives her a slight smile.

She returns it with a hopeful grin of her own. "But we have right now, right?"

He nods happily and laces his fingers in her own; relishing this new feeling he knows he's going to have to give up in just a few hours.

"Yeah." He looks up at her. "We have now."

/

At three twenty-seven, he finds himself leaning in to kiss her. He's afraid he's going to screw it up, but it turns out naturally and while it is slightly awkward, it's also sort of magical and wonderful.

At three thirty-nine, exactly four hours since he collided with her on Main Street, he tells her he loves her and he fucking means it, despite knowing her for such a short time. He's never been so sure of anything.

"I love you." He says, breathless from all the kissing they've been doing. "I love you, and I know I love you. And that's so fucking hard for me to say, because I've spent centuries feeling nothing but hate and regret and guilt and sadness and all these bad things and then suddenly you waltz into my life with your stupidly adorable clumsiness and suddenly I feel things I don't know if I've ever even felt before. And it would be so incredibly stupid of you to love me back because I'm dangerous, I'm so fucking dangerous, but I hope you do, because my whole existence revolves around goodbyes but I never want to say goodbye to you, Ally Dawson."

He's never had so many emotions before, and... God damn it, is he _crying?_

Death was crying. Death was fucking crying.

Austin Moon was crying.

"You make me feel human again." He whispers through tears, giving a small smile.

Ally is shaking her head and crying along with him. "I do. I love you. More than I thought I could love anyone, let alone in a few hours, let alone _Death. _God, it's just... this can't happen. I _can't _be in love with you. You _can't _be in love with me. This is so messed up."

It really is a mess. Because 'right now' isn't enough. He's got forever to love her, but three-ish hours to be _with _her.

"We'll.. we'll figure something out." He promises with false enthusiasm. He has absolutely no real ideas that can fix this, but he really doesn't want to spend their precious time crying. He leans in to kiss the tears off of her cheek. "Hey, don't worry, alright? We've got right now."

If that's what it takes to be with her, he'll pretend it's enough.

/

It's six-thirty, he realizes. Twenty-four minutes before he has to be back at Main street (probably more like twenty), and he doesn't even know the victim's name.

Ally walks back into the room, dressed in only a towel after her shower.

"Austin, I completely forgot, I'm so sorry, I have to get going really soon, I have a seminar at the library up the street on some new cardiac surgery technique, and I-"

He cuts her off. "Hey, it's okay. I have an.. appointment up that way anyways. I'll walk you there." He smiles, pretending he doesn't realize these are their last few moments together, possibly ever.

Ally inhales sharply. "Appointment? Does that mean someone's going to die?"

He nods gravely. Because of Ally, he'd grown a new sympathy for the human race that was going to make his job a hell of a lot harder. What if these were good people? With people who they loved, and who loved them back, like how he loved Ally?

"Car accident. I'm about to check the name." He says, holding up the small leather book in which he was given his appointments.

Her eyes widen. "Oh gosh. I don't want to hear. What if it's someone I know? Oh God.. I'm just going to go get dressed now." She hoists the towel back up her chest and runs off to her room.

Austin chuckles softly. She really was adorable. He flips open the book to the current date and, seeing the name, lets out a dry sob in shock.

God, no.

Not Ally.

Not _his _Ally of seven hours, who had a whole life ahead of her and was beautiful and sweet and _no._

He couldn't do it. He _wouldn't _do it.

Screw the system. Screw the Board. Ally was the only glimmer of light in his dreary existence, because she was _alive. _She was lively and vivid, and he wasn't about to just let that be taken away from her.

She was his last appointment of the day. Maybe he could stay with her, here, never take another appointment and never let her out of his sight, and maybe he could pretend to be human, and they could live together.

But he knew that wasn't how it worked.

"Ready to go?" She bounces back into the room in jeans and a green sweater, her hair tied back in a high ponytail. She looks happy and lively and not at all like a girl who was supposed to die in fourteen minutes.

"You look beautiful." He tells her honestly.

"Thank you." She smiles radiantly. His heart breaks, knowing that she has no clue what her fate is to be, so shortly. She was only twenty-two. He couldn't end her life now.

Silently, even though he knows there's no God, he prays for a miracle for anyone out there who might possibly hear his pleas.

"Austin, if we don't get going, I'm going to be late!" She whines.

"Why don't we just stay here for a little while?" He suggests softly.

Her eyes are mollified, but she's still impatient. "Fine. Austin, you can wait here for a while but I'm going to my seminar. Otherwise I'm going to get my grade marked down..."

He sighs, trying to hold back tears, knowing there's no way to stop her from leaving this apartment.

"No, no, let's go. But I'm going to hold your hand the whole way there, okay?"

She holds it out eagerly.

/

They hit the fateful address, the one where she's scheduled to die. He's faced with a final ultimatum: he can either let her die as she's supposed to, and they can live together in his other world, immortal and forever.

Or he can break the system and try to let her live. This might come with some unknown consequences for him, but she would live longer. They could reschedule her date, maybe sixty years from now, after she'd had years of a happy life.

He knows this isn't how things work. Everyone had a time, and hers was now.

But he had to try.

"Oh thank God, finally, the walk signal!" She sighs, starting out into the street.

He tries to yank her back to the sidewalk, but as soon as he feels the energy of her soul leaving her body, he knows he has to let her go.

"What, Austin?" She sighs exasperatedly.

"I love you." He says, tears welling up in his eyes. He kisses her softly for the last time on this Earth, and then he sees the truck, coasting towards the traffic light he would not stop at.

"I love you, too. I'll only be there an hour." She smiles, and walks out to meet her fate.

He watches it happen as if it were slow-motion. It's hard, so _hard _to watch.

It was a human that killed Ally Dawson. This was why he hated humans.

Because he loved her.

He felt pain. A lot of it. But he also felt love.

That was the thing about Ally: she made him feel things.

/

He wakes up in the other world, in his bedroom, in his bed.

Ally Dawson is next to him, as confused as she is dead.

"Where am I?" She asks, dazed.

He smiled. "You're home."

This was their forever, he realized.

He could get used to that.

::fin::

**A/N: Oh dear God, what am I even doing.**

**Is it bad that I sort of like this? Like, aside from the ending, I really liked this. And all of its potential hidden meanings (sly smile)  
OH AND I HOPE I DIDN'T OFFEND ANYONE WITH MY SLIGHT RELIGION BASHING AT THE BEGINNING. I'm a fairly religious person myself, but I was trying to write in-character.. **

**Shoutouts to William Sadler and Mandy Pantinkin for playing roles of Death so awesomely and providing inspiration. And also shoutout to the blog "writingprompts" on tumblr for the inspiration for this story.**

**OH I HAVE SOME NOTES FOR THIS ABOUT MY "HIDDEN MEANINGS":**  
**1) Basically, I think that Ally is/was sort of a reincarnation of the girl he was once in love with in his past life, which is why he falls in love with her so fast. And vice-versa.**  
**2)Also, this was kind of a play on what would happen to Austin and Ally if they weren't music partners. She'd probably go onto some professional career, and while Austin obviously wouldn't be Death, he probably wouldn't become a popstar.**  
**3)WOW THIS IS VAGUELY REMINISCENT OF TWILIGHT AND THAT WAS UNINTENTIONAL APOLOGIES**.

**Review, maybe?**

**(:Tessa:)**


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